Josh’s Favorite Films of 2009
I’ll remember it as a landmark year for animation. I’ll remember it as a watershed for children’s literary adaptations. I’ll remember it as the year we finally got a good Iraq war film. I’ll remember 2009 fondly, and vividly, thanks in no small part to these ten films.
10. The Princess and the Frog (Ron Clements and John Musker). It’s not a throwback; it’s a modernization, an era-transcending re-imagining of vintage Disney animation that leaves no doubt as to the style’s relevance in 2009. With its deft balance of starry-eyed romance and hard-work realism, this is a film I’d be thrilled to show to my (hypothetical) kids. The bright colors and Naw’lins spirit make it a joy for grown-ups, too.
09. Adventureland (Greg Mottola). A coming-of-age story that somehow transcends nostalgia with an undercurrent of something deeper; it’s a summer rememberance that leaves lasting scars. Its darkly comic undertow makes it one of the most seductive and surprising pictures of the year, and the soundtrack nails the 1980s like no other movie I’ve seen.
08. The Class (Laurent Cantet). “Based on a true story” fiction has never seemed more like a documentary than in this compelling classroom drama, which sidesteps the usual Dead Poets schmaltz in favor of hard choices, brutal consequences, and a remarkably keen eye for inner-city dynamics.
07. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (Phil Lord and Chris Miller). An utter delight. Deliriously funny, brimming with imagination, and full of heart, this is as close to Pixar levels of excellence as any other studio has come in the past several years.
06. The Brothers Bloom (Rian Johnson). The Brick director moves from high-school noir to a brilliantly funny and creative caper that toys with storytelling structure but pulls the postmodern rug right out from under us by keeping the focus on the characters. Does the con represent cinema’s central illusions, or the narrative of life itself? The answer is surprisingly deep.
05. The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow). In Dr. Strangelove, war was sex; here, war is addiction. Bigelow’s film deserves every kudo it gets, not just for being the most suspenseful and white-knuckled terrifying film of the year, but for transcending politics in favor of exploring violence and human nature on a much deeper level.
04. Summer Hours (Olivier Assayas). A film about art, aging, family, the passage of time… you know, the important things. Assayas has made here the most poetic and lingering cinematic meditation of the year, a film that doesn’t dazzle you with glitz and glamour but stays with you longer than you expect it to.
03. Up (Pete Docter). Pixar’s movies are becoming almost alarmingly sophisticated. This one is part slapstick comedy, part B-movie adventure, and part reflection on the pains and joys of marriage. Indeed, the marriage montage at the beginning of the movie stays with me as the most moving scene of the year, and the central metaphor of the house dazzles me still.
02. Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson). If you think you’ve seen everything an animated movie can do, you haven’t seen Mr. Fox, the wildest and most original animated film of the year. Anderson has paid tribute to Roald Dahl in corduroy and fur, in deadpan humor and surprising warmth. The themes are rich, the laughs real, and visuals one homespun delight after another. This is Anderson’s masterpiece thus far.
01. A Serious Man (Joel and Ethan Coen). The Book of Job as pitch-black comedy– because really, how else would you film it? The Coens‘ great Jewish epic is their most personal film, a labor of love in which the object of desire isn’t in easy answers, but the right to ask prickly questions. A rich, layered masterpiece.
And, some more honors:
A film that I loved in theaters but ultimately found to be morally wearying: Inglorious Basterds.
A film I deeply admired but couldn’t quite love: Where the Wild Things Are.
A very good movie that has been blown way out of proportion: Up in the Air.
Two more animated films that were thisclose to making the list: Coraline and Ponyo.
Still need to see: Seraphine, The Road, The White Ribbon, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, so many others.
Josh’s Top Ten (or so) Films of the Decade, 2000-2009
Ten years, ten movies. I’m not sure how this process works for everyone else, but for me, it starts off very easy, then grows very difficult, and, in the end, becomes very easy again.
When I first started thinking about which films I was going to honor as my favorites of the past decade, I jotted down a completely off-the-cuff, rough-draft list of ten movies– and as it turns out, the final list is extremely close to that initial, knee-jerk response. But before I could arrive at that conclusion, I had to very deliberately think through all the movies that weren’t on that first list. Among the films that I very seriously considered for this list are David Cronenberg’s subversive drama A History of Violence; Jim Jarmusch’s oddball mystery Broken Flowers; Guillermo del Toro’s nightmarish fantasy Pan’s Labyrinth; Zhang Yimou’s lavish epic Hero; and Edward Yang’s contemplative masterpiece, Yi Yi. 2008’s Speed Racer was one of the first films I thought of for my first list, and the one that it took me the longest to cut– a misunderstood, soon-to-be cult classic, and a sheer pleasure over which I feel no guilt.
But the ten films I’ve selected– and will be counting down over the next few weeks, leading up to the end of 2009– are, in the end, very easy and natural choices for me, movies I’m fairly positive I will still be watching, considering, and loving in another decade’s time. Whether any of them will become classics, I can’t say; all I can say is that they’ve already become favorites.
1. There Will Be Blood (Anderson, 2007)
3. The New World (Malick, 2006)
4. Spirited Away (Miyazaki, 2002)
5. No Country for Old Men (Coen, 2007)
6. Punch-drunk Love (Anderson, 2002)
7. Lost in Translation (Coppola, 2003)
8. Gosford Park (Altman, 2002)
Landmark Recordings: The 2000s
I’ve been doing this for about ten years now; my first published review was in early 2000, and I’ve been steadily listening and writing about music ever since. I loved music before 2000, of course, but, since donning my critical thinking hat and becoming an ever-aspiring music critic, I’ve explored music with greater and greater passion and, hopefully, knowledge. As a result, the music released in the past decade has a special place in my heart; look at my list of all-time favorites and you’ll notice a distinct bent toward the contemporary, a trend about which I am unashamed.
It’s hard to believe that this, the first decade of the millennium, is coming to a close. To mark the occasion– and to blaze a trail for my “favorite albums of the decade” list that will inevitably come in late December/early January– I’m starting a semi-regular series of posts, looking back at the landmark albums and trends that marked my own listening habits, one year at a time. And, taking a cue from Julie Andrews, I’ve decided to start at the beginning…
(Note: There is no Landmarks post for the year 2009, but a list of my favorite recordings from that year can be found here.)
Thao and the Get Down Stay Down: “Know Better Learn Faster”
The Attractions. The E-Street Band. And… the Get Down Stay Down? Alright, so the latter ensemble may not pack the same kind of rock and roll muscle or classicist clout of the first two, but on Know Better Learn Faster, their second outing as the back-up band for singer/songwriter Thao Nguyen, they sidestep such concerns altogether and give a convincing audition for the part of the next great supporting crew. They do everything a great supporting cast should do; They stay on their toes, nimbly and effortlessly following their maestro from one scene to the next, never stepping into her spotlight but occasionally stealing the spotlight all the same.
And that’s not even the coolest trick they pull off here. Even more impressive: They take us on a slapdash tour of indie rock, circa 2009, and remind us just how versatile and wonderfully weird the scene can be at its very best.
Read the rest at Stereo Subversion.
The Hurst Fifteen: Favorite Recordings of 2009
2009 was weird. We buried the King of Pop, watched the Roots take over late-night TV, and endured a Creed reunion. Songwriters stopped writing about George Bush and started writing about Barack Obama, and critics began scratching out lists of their favorite recordings of the decade. (Stay tuned!) Some other stuff happened, too. And here I am, with an album of old New Orleans standards, a flamenco-metal explosion, a full disc of animal-themed stand-up comedy, and– I never thought it would really happen– a new U2 album. These are the fifteen recordings that moved me, made me think, made me laugh, made me play air guitar, made me appreciate music more and more over the last twelve months– my very favorite albums of the year.
15. Jarvis Cocker
Further Complications
(Full review)
The Woody Allen of rock spins his neuroses and midlife insecurities into glam-tinted, garage-stomping rock and roll gold. This is a rock album about sex, and a sex album that actually rocks, with unbridled frustration and raw libido spilling over into full-band mayhem. Cocker writes with such incredible precision that he often sounds more like one of the great British humorists than any rock singer I can think of; “I never said I was deep,” he claims here, but, whether he’s telling a story or simply rattling off self-deprecations puns, there’s wit and sophistication to these lusty jams and carnal ballads.
14. Arctic Monkeys
Humbug
(Full review)
Clearly, they’ve memorized the rock and roll playbook. First, there was the heavily-hyped debut. Then, the quickly-released, banged-out-on-the-road follow-up. And now: The difficult third album. And by difficult, I mean totally rad. The Arctics get dark and get weird, but not even a coat of Josh Homme’s desert mystique can gloss over the nervous energy and cavernous thump of their rock instincts. Things get plenty twisted, especially in the lyrics department, but what lingers is the thrill of knowing that, the more comfortable they become in their own skin, the more it seems like their imaginations are limitless.
13. Rodrigo y Gabriela
11:11
(Full review)
I’m so excited to include this one on my list, because I’ve never celebrated an album anything like this one– probably because I’ve never heard an album anything like this one. These two acoustic pickers shred like they’re still heavy metal thrashers, but with complexity and sophistication that boggle the mind. But where most acoustic guitar albums are mere showcases for technical prowess, this one’s less about technique and more about raw imagination. Each of these eleven songs is an homage to another artist– ranging from their knotty Santana tribute to their spacey Pink Floyd ringer– but the album ultimately stands as a monument to the duo’s own limitless possibilities. The whole thing is so vibrant and full of life, it’s impossible not to get swept along with it.
12. Frank Turner
Poetry of the Deed
(Full review)
An album that does what it says. Turner’s lyrics celebrate music-making that’s gritty, down to earth, devoid of pretense and rich in passion, and the music backs him up, jumping from homespun folk songs to pint-hoisting pub rock with earnest abandon. The whole album is vivid proof of its central thesis: “There’s no such thing as rock stars/ There’s just people making music.” Turner may never be a rock star, but he is the real deal, and this one’s a delight from start to finish.
11. Mos Def
The Ecstatic
(Full review)
It’s the comeback of the year, in which the prodigal MC puts his acting career on hold long enough to stake out a new identity as hip-hop’s global goodwill ambassador on this, a spirited, spiritual, and optimistic record for the age of Obama. It’s streetwise and philosophical at the same time; when Mos pledges to put “peace before anything/ God before everything,” it’s both a manifesto and a statement of reality. The record tackles timely issues in a way that’s personal and intimate, and it’s marked as much be its little quirks and funny asides as it is its pan-cultural zest and big-picture vision. Warm and weird and oddly addictive, this is a hip-hop album for now, and for all time.
10. Tom Waits
Glitter and Doom Live
(Full review)
Drawing mostly from his ANTI- albums, hitting high points from Bone Machine and a few scattered oldies, and avoiding the obvious selections altogether, Glitter and Doom plays like a strange, surprising primer on the strange, surprising music of Tom Waits; and yet, the arrangements are so wonderfully unpredictable that it ultimately stands not only as a superb anthology, but also an essential Waits album in its own right. Hear it for the voice, hear it for the songs– or hear it for “Tom’s Tales,” an entire extra disc of stage banter and stand-up comedy which is every bit as awesome as it sounds.
09. Buddy and Julie Miller
Written in Chalk
(Full review)
Never mind that it’s full of break-up songs, or that Buddy and Julie sing separately on most tracks: This is no Rumors-style tabloid pop. It’s profound and complex, mapping the intersections between sin and suffering, pain and joy, country and soul,; it starts with a paean to innocence and ends with a sad hymn about man’s depravity. In between, there are a lot of sad songs, but also some grace notes of pure joy– particularly in “Gasoline and Matches,” the year’s most open-hearted and flirtatious ode to marital intimacy. It adds up to something that transcends labels, and, once again, it proves that they can call it a Buddy album, they can call it a Julie album, they can call it just about anything– with the Millers involved, the results are never anything less than stirring, and, in this case, revelatory.
08. Paul Burch
Still Your Man
(Full review)
I’ve learned, since first reviewing this record, that the lady Burch is dancing with on the album cover is, in fact, the artist’s own wife. That feels about right: Burch is a man curiously uninterested in the irony and affectation of the age, instead trading in an open-hearted sincerity that dates back to the days when country, blues, folk, and soul music were all still considered “pop.” That kind of sincerity never goes out of style, and when it’s paired with inspired songwriting– as it is here– it’s about as good as music gets. These are songs of love and devotion that take on romance from a variety of different angles– there are folk songs that could pass for old minstrel numbers, parlor songs that could have played on the radio before the war, simmering R&B platters that could have been staples for Sam Cooke– but they’re all united by music that swings with joy and a heart that brims with unvarnished optimism.
07. The Flaming Lips
Embryonic
(Full review)
It’s 2009′s most audacious makeover, in which our fearless freaks swap their warm electronic tones and left-of-center pop hooks in favor of On the Corner clatter and spacey keyboards lifted from an old Herbie Hancock LP. This is the most gonzo music they’ve ever done, and the edgiest to come out of indie rock in forever, but, because it’s the Flaming Lips, it’s also smart and full of layers. Wayne Coyne still has his mind on ethics and philosophy, which is, in a way, fitting for this kind of collegiate free jazz. Anything goes, including recruiting Karen O to cut some strange animal noises. Not even Miles Davis would have thought of that one.
06. Allen Toussaint
The Bright Mississippi
(Full review)
If you think the idea of an album of old standards celebrating the city of New Orleans sounds like a museum piece, you obviously haven’t heard The Bright Mississippi. Joe Henry pulled together his usual studio pros to back the piano vet, who tackles jazz with the same smooth sophistication he’s long brought to funk and R&B music. The results are singularly joyful and liberating: No album released in 2009 elevates my spirits quite like this one. It’s unpredictable, improvisational, and deeply beautiful– and, impure though it may be, it’s the best jazz album of the year.
05. Fire in My Bones: Raw + Rare + Otherworldly African-American Gospel
(Full review)
It’s a compilation that contains multitudes: It’s a testament to the sheer breadth, vision, and creative spark of postwar black gospel. Fire in My Bones is a remarkable collection of songs united, often, by nothing more than creed– basement funk, field recorded sing-alongs, and congregational ravers blur the line of where the church infiltrated the culture and the culture infiltrated the church. Theologically, it’s a feast of songs about the power of the Almighty– a topic that’s comforting and sometimes terrifying. As a collection, this is quite simply essential.
04. U2
No Line on the Horizon
(Full review)
Destined from the word “go” to be misunderstood, U2′s long labored-over opus is neither a classicist rock record nor a return to their 90s experimentation; it is, rather, a layered synthesis of everywhere the band has been, and everything they can’t leave behind. Less daring but more sophisticated than Pop, it’s a left-field fusion of rock and soul, pop and electronica; of muted colors and brilliant euphoria. It may not have lit the charts on fire quite like the last two records, but that’s only because it’s a more difficult and complicated work: When else has U2 so intermingled arena-shaking rockers like “Magnificent” with songs as somber as the hymn-like “White as Snow,” or followed super-serious epics like “Moment of Surrender” with the flashy pyrotechnics or “Get on Your Boots?” But what makes it a triumph is that it all sticks: Every left turn ultimately leads back to the album’s main path, which is as thematically and musically intricate as any U2 album yet, and nearly devotional in its spiritual fervor and theological richness.
03. Jimi Tenor and Tony Allen
Inspiration, Information
(Full review)
Of all the musicians I listened to this year, none sounded like they were having more fun than Jimi Tenor and Tony Allen. They’re two kids in a candy store: Tenor jumps from analog synth to flute to saxaphone, mulling over Richard Dawkins quotes and singing about everything from British immigration policy to kinky dancefloor sex, all with a mad scientist’s gleam in his eye and an ADD kid’s refusal to sit still for more than a second at a time. Allen just bangs the hell out of his drum kit. He’s in the groove, from the first moment to the last, keeping Tenor’s wildest flights of fancy grounded in the beat, ensuring that this– the weirdest, most addictively fun record of the year– never flies too far off the rails.
02. Richard Hawley
Truelove’s Gutter
(Full review)
Modern life is rubbish, and Richard Hawley is fighting back. Truelove’s Gutter is a sweet escape into beauty and serenity, but it isn’t a white flag: Hawley writes as a man who’s been beaten down by the noise and temptation of living in the 21st century, desperately clinging to his resolute belief in love’s power and romance’s allure. I could write page after page of superlatives extolling the deceptive simplicity of these compositions, or the sheer power of Hawley’s melodies, but at its core this is simply an album of exquisite sadness– the kind that leaves the listener not depressed, but awestruck. This is a soundtrack for fighting to retain one’s soul amidst the cling and clatter of technology and unchecked ambition, an album that finds peace in the midst of chaos. Hawley’s dark night of the soul is a thing of rare enchantment, an album that doesn’t invite quiet contemplation so much as it single-handedly cultivates it.
01. Joe Henry
Blood from Stars
(Full review)
Sounding at once like a more-perfect version of the sort of album Henry made with Scar and a late-night, minor-key cousin to Dylan’s Love & Theft, Blood from Stars unearths an almost vanished history of America and brings it crashing into the present in brilliant color. Ghosts of the past linger here not as reminiscences, but as those wily spirits that are ever-lurking just below the surface of things: We hear them in the romantic whimsy of the parlor crooner, in the electric mayhem of the blues, in the controlled chaos of jazz, in the strange and wonderful poetry of folk music. Henry bookends this album with gospel-fired spirituals, and in between there’s politics and love and God, dark and alluring alleys marked by flamenco guitars and cantankerous raves. It’s an album where darkness and depth are one and the same, and somewhere in the shadows there lies great and unnerving truth– for any listener bold enough to seek it.
The Top Ten (or so) Films of the Decade: #1 There Will Be Blood (Anderson, 2007)
An American epic, a monster movie, a father-son story– There Will Be Blood is a film (and, perhaps, the only film) that is big and primal enough to encompass the era, scarily intimate enough to be disquieting and unnerving on a deeply personal level. Its characters are archetypes, and yet they are characters just the same: they are suggestive, even symbolic, of things that are deep and primeval, but they are not pawns in an allegory. Though the film is a fiction, it rings true in a very eerie way, as though it is, secretly, a history.
I have remarked numerous times that, to me, Anderson’s film plays out like a horror movie, where Daniel Plainview himself is the monster, but thinking about it now, that isn’t quite right; he is monstrous, yes, but he remains a man, someone very different from, say, the purely evil, spectral presence of Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men. He is not without his redeeming qualities, and not without his human side. But his virtues– his hard work, his sense of vocation, his relentlessness– are warped and turned rotten. The true menace in this film is, basically, greed, but here it is manifest in the unholy marriage of religion and commerce– a theme that is important to me, and apropos for the 2000s.
Daniel Day-Lewis is astonishing, close to preternatural here. I have heard his work criticized as being too broad, and it is true that he is stretched to cartoonish proportions, but that’s who Daniel Plainview is; Day-Lewis simply inhabits him perfectly, and I have no trouble believing that there really are men like Plainview, because I have no trouble believing that there could be a man like Plainview lurking somewhere in the dark corners of my own soul.
The film seems to be fueled, at times, by sheer audacity– the magnificent set piece of the oil fire, Johnny Greenwood’s twisted score– but Anderson’s mastery here is that for all its boldness, this is basically a very real story that is, if anything, a little too close to home, not out there in the cinematic abstract. I am increasingly drawn to the film’s father-son dynamic; this arc is ripe for Freudian psychoanalysis, yet it is, more essentially, affecting and complex.
Watching There Will Be Blood is a terrifying and awesome experience. It leaves me shaken, and in wonder. It is a monument forged from darkness, a film that wrestles with shadows and comes away with a piece of the sublime.
New Release Round-Up, Mainstream Edition: Shakira, John Mayer, Wale
“Mainstream,” of course, doesn’t mean what it used to, but nevertheless: These three new albums, which have been in rotation off and on for the past couple of weeks, are all fairly high-profile new releases. You may have even heard some of them on the radio. At any rate, I don’t have enough to say about any of them to warrant full reviews, but I do have some quick-draw comments to make.
Shakira
She Wolf
I remember when Madonna used to make albums like this– sleek, stylish, sexy, club-ready pop. Only, I don’t remember Madge ever comparing herself to an old coffee pot, or pining for Matt Damon. And that’s the biggest difference between the Material Girl and her most striking and confident heiress in 2009; Madonna’s music was always interwoven with her style, to the point where the songs and the accompanying images were frequently impossible to separate. Her personality was, to a large degree, just a good bit of marketing. Not so with Shakira. Here’s a diva who’s not afraid to get weird, a sex symbol who is made all the sexier by her off-the-cuff humor and her willingness to put something of herself into her songs. So sure, these tracks are polished to perfection, but not at the expense of their soul, and that’s what makes this quirky little record arguably the best mainstream pop album of the year.
John Mayer
Battle Studies
Twenty years ago, Nick Lowe wrote a song called “I Live on a Battlefield.” John Mayer takes that metaphor and stretches it over the course of eleven songs that seem to last an eternity; comparing one’s romantic life to a war is fine, but making a concept album about it seems a bit lame, especially when you’ve exhausted the conceit midway through track #2, and when you lack any of the passion or wit to make it believable. I hate to say it, but after one very fine studio album (Continuum) and a stellar live date (Try!) that emphasized his greatest virtues– his blues guitar chops, his songcraft– Mayer is back to making vanilla pop albums that play up his greatest liabilities, namely his tendency to drift toward sound instead of song. These songs are buried under layer upon layer of rote, humorless synths and studio sheen. Maybe he’s trying to make a seductive, late-night bedroom album, but then why the take on “Crossroads?” This is a frustrating project from start to finish, which is bad news given that, until now, it seemed like Mayer was really coming into his own.
Wale
Attention Deficit
Wale is not an MC lacking in personality– remember, this is the guy who rose to fame on the basis of a Seinfeld-inspired record called The Mixtape About Nothing– but what personality he has is stretched so thin on his proper studio debut, he may as well not have one. Which is not to say that it’s a bad record– there are some terrific beats, some colorful production turns, some fantastic rhymes– but the whole thing is so bloated with producers and guest vocalists, jumping from style to style and topic to topic, that it’s simply very hard to tell exactly who Wale is or what he’s all about, making this a very enjoyable, Kanye-styled hip-hop album, but not the breakthrough that it could have been.
CT’s Top Albums of 2009
Somewhere along the way, I seem to have become the go-to guy for Joe Henry blurb-writing. First I was asked to pen a brief synopsis of his Blood from Stars album for Stereo Subversion’s top albums of 2009 list, and now I’ve done the same for Christianity Today. Not that I’m complaining, of course; it’s a masterful album, and I’m both thrilled to see it appear on so many end-of-the-year lists and honored to have the chance to write about it.
As for the rest of the CT list, let me say that I’m very impressed with it; the music writers at CT, lead by the ever-courageous Mark Moring, have made a big step toward embracing meaningful, artful music without regard to where it comes from– that is to say, they’re looking to music made from outside the quote-unquote Christian music industry. Yes, there are still plenty of CCM albums on this list, but this is Christianity Today we’re talking about, so that seems both obvious and appropriate. That their list also includes Joe Henry, U2, Buddy and Julie Miller, The Mountain Goats, and mewithoutYou– many of whom would have never even been considered in past years– shows that the CT team is being discerning and thoughtful in their selections.
As for the CCM choices: I am not, personally, enamored of each and every one of them, but I can at least appreciate them all and have no qualms about their presence on such a list. And the #1 album, given to Sara Groves– who has taken CT’s top honors several times in the past– is well-deserving. Her Fireflies & Songs is an exquisitely beautiful album, one of the most profound and inspiring albums about marriage I’ve ever heard.
So, kudos to the CT team. And a reminder to my own readers: The Hurst Review’s picks for 2009′s best albums will be unveiled next Monday, Lord willing.
The Top Ten (or so) Films of the Decade: #2 Finding Nemo (Stanton, 2003)/ The Incredibles (Bird, 2004)/ Ratatouille (Bird, 2007)/ Wall*E (Stanton, 2008)
I refuse to believe that this is cheating. For one thing, I’ve been hinting at it all along– these are me top ten or so films, 2000-2009. For another, I honestly can’t decide. Two years ago, I was pretty sure Pixar’s aughties opus was The Incredibles. This time last year, I was dead set on Wall*E. Today, I’m thinking Ratatouille. So it goes.
These four films are, to be sure, very different critters. But what they represent, when taken together, is something singular and astonishing: Four movies, two directors, and one studio with a passion and a sense of integrity that set their work in a class entirely of its own. If you’re making all-ages, animated movies in the 00s and you’re not working for Pixar– well, chances are, it sucks to be you.
Animation aside, these are standard-setting films, uniform in their commitment to excellence in terms of plot and character. Visually, they’re dazzling, but only in service of story. They’re witty, too, but not cluttered with pop culture in-jokes or lowbrow humor. They’re movies for kids and adults, made with the conviction that if you’re going to make a great children’s movie, it must also work as a great grown-ups’ movie.
Taken separately, all are landmark films., and they deserve superlatives that have nothing to do with their animation. Consider, if you will, that Finding Nemo is among the most colorful and exhilarating adventure movies of the last ten years. Consider that The Incredibles is the most creative superhero movies of the decade, and one of its most compelling family dramas. Consider that Ratatouille belongs on the short-list of the all-time great movies about art– and about food. And consider that Wall*E is arguably the decade’s finest, purest science fiction; and with its virtually silent opening act, it’s one of the bravest mainstream, summer blockbuster offerings.
Taken together, these are movies that stand for something. It’s telling, I think, that a new Pixar movie is almost always greeted with attempts at politicizing; the left-wing was, you might recall, annoyed at The Incredibles for portraying a traditional family in a positive light, while the right was up in arms over Wall*E as some kind of environmentalist propaganda. These are shallow and silly readings both; ultimately, these films are all about something much bigger. They are, I think, about respect: The respect between parent and child; the respect between family members, and members of a society; the respect of the artist; and the respect for our world and our own shared humanity.
I will note that, in an effort to be at least somewhat decisive with the Pixar canon, I have included here only four of their seven post-2000 films. Monsters Inc. is a wonderful Saturday morning cartoon, zany and original but not quite as substantial as the films listed here. Cars, too, is a great movie, but comes up just a touch short of grade-A Pixar magic. And Up, though one of the best movies about marriage I’ve ever seen, is still just a bit too recent for me to feel right about including it among these classics. But give it a year or so and I’m sure this mortal lock will be even tougher for me to sort out.
#1. There Will Be Blood (Anderson, 2007)
#3. The New World (Malick, 2006)
Blakroc: “Blakroc”
If you go to UrbanDictionary.com and look up the word “coochie,” you’ll be met with a message explaining that, if you don’t know what it is, you’ve probably never seen one. I might add that you’re also probably not on the same wavelength as Blakroc; it’s the title of the album’s first song, for one thing, and a later song is titled after a thematically related term, “Hoochie Coo.” But speaking more generally, the presence of the word at album’s beginning is indicative of the overall attitude– and lack of decorum– present herein.
This music is vulgar, in the sense of being very base, primal, and rough; and it’s tasteless, in the sense that it plays things loud, loose, and ragged. That’s all befitting an album that was cut spontaneously in just a few days; that splits the difference between hip-hop and blues; and that focuses its lyrical attention on cheating women, hard times, money, and drugs– common subjects dating back to the genesis of the blues and all the way to the cutting edge of rap circa 2009.
But while it may be visceral and brawny, it’s not dumb: Actually, it’s a surprisingly well-conceived concoction that completely redefines what “rap/rock” might mean in the 21st century, sounding quite unlike anything made by, say, Linkin Park or Limp Bizkit. And of course it does: To be a bit of a reductionist about it, the blue are brought hot and hard by the Black Keys, while the rapping comes via a roster of MCs that includes Mos Def, Ludacris, and half the Wu Tang Clan, including hip-hop’s reigning king Raekwon and the deceased Ol’ Dirty Bastard.
But that makes this sound like some kind of lame black-meets-white experiment, where actually it’s a perfectly symbiotic and sympathetic affair. The Keys know how important sound and recording techniques are to the blues, and they carry the same sensibility over to these slightly more beat-oriented numbers, emphasizing the low end but keeping things unvarnished and wonderfully rough. And the MCs present lock into the spirit of the blues; the focus is less on verbal finesse than on gritty storytelling.
The camaraderie present in these sessions shines through on the record, with house band and spotlighted MCs always seeming to meet each other halfway: The Keys aren’t afraid to let their featured vocalists’ individual personalities shine through, as when Mos Def goes off into typically philosophical territory, but he returns the favor by keeping it dialed into a low, bluesy rumble. Newcomer NOE sounds like a dead-ringer for Jay-Z, but his “Hard Times” performance could almost scan as an old blues song. The Keys, meanwhile, bring a hook bold enough that it could almost make its way to a ringtone, were it not so hard-hitting and from-the-gut.
Raekwon, meanwhile, is still on a coke-rap kick– his “Stay Off the Fuckin’ Flowers” is thematically of a piece with his own latest album, but he performs it over a brooding, minor-key clatter by the Keys; in this context, the blue hues of his story are illuminated, and the distance between old-timey hard-luck stories and more modern tales of the dealer’s downfall seems that much shorter. The rest of the record is in much the same spirit: The songs are ugly and sexy and mean, but they aren’t without dimension. And speaking of which, how nice that there’s some space here for R&B diva Nicole Wray to bring a much-needed feminine perspective to the torchy kiss-off “Why Can’t I Forget Him.”
That this project exists in the first place is something of a surprise, but it’s not totally out of the blue; the Black Keys collaborated with producer Danger Mouse on their last LP as a band, which hinted at their interest in this kind of music, but Blakroc is actually a much more convincing fusion of rap and blues. The Danger Mouse production touches on Attack & Release brought some hazy psychadelia and spooky atmospherics to the proceedings that sometimes shifted the focus to mood instead of hard-hitting songs, and if the Keys have maintained some of that ominous darkness here, they’ve also made it subservient to their grooves and their snarling riffs, making Blakroc an album that’s deeply felt– and deeply satisfying– purely on a gut level, smart music that you don’t have to think about to fall in love with.
